The Third generation partnership project (3GPP) includes specifications for radio link monitoring. These specifications may involve monitoring a link for a specified period of time for averaging purposes. For example, a specification may require a radio access link to be monitored continuously for two hundred milliseconds in order to more accurately determine the link quality. During these periods of time, a physical layer reports synchronization signals associated with received frames to a controller in an upper layer, for example, a radio resource controller (“RRC”). Based on the received signals, the RRC determines whether the current communication link is stable. Stability or instability may be determined, via one or more filters, by receipt of successive in-synch signals or successive out-of-synch signals. While such specifications may accurately define a quality of a radio link during continuous reception modes, the specifications fail to account for discontinuous reception modes.
Discontinuous reception (“DRX”) modes enable a mobile device to enter a sleep state and wake periodically to listen for paging messages. The sleep states may be negotiated, in combination with the connection details, when a mobile device or user equipment connects to a network. When operating in DRX mode, radio link monitoring according to current specifications may be ineffective because measurements cannot be done during the length of time the UE is in sleep mode, referred to as the DRX period. This effectively reduces the actual measurement duration and may result in a less averaged measurement. Consequently, in DRX mode, current specifications for radio link monitoring may result in measurements that fluctuate faster than necessary resulting in temporary glitches or short-term variations being reported to the RRC. These temporary glitches may result in the RRC having to react unnecessarily and result in inaccurate status reports.